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MR. WINTHROPS ADDRESS 



BEFORE THE 



NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY, 



IN THE 



CITY OF NEW YORK, 



December 23, 1839. 



? 




ADDRESS, 



DELITERED BEFORE THE 



NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY, 



CITY OF NEW YORK, 



DECEMBER 23, 1839. 




BY ROBERT C. WINTHROP 




BOSTON: 

PUBLISHED BY PERKINS & MARVIN. 

NEW YORK: 

GOULD, NEWMAN & SAXTON. 

1840. 






New York, Dec. 31, 1839. 
Sir, 

In behalf of the New England Society in the City of New York, and by their 
direction, it gives us much satisfaction to express to you their unfeigned thanks for the Ora- 
tion pronounced by you, at their solicitation, in the Broadway Tabernacle in this City, on 
the 23d inst., upon the occasion of their public remembrance of the Anniversary of the 
'Landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth' in 1620; an Address, wliich, in the principles it 
recommended, and, in the historic research and statesmanlike views it disclosed, was so 
entirely worthy of the family name you bear ; and one which, in the eloquence and power 
with which it took possession of the mind of the hearer, gave full proof that the City of 
Boston, in its public speakers and leading minds, had not fallen away from the 'Town of 
Boston' of earlier days, and dearer associations. The Society earnestly request a copy for 
publication. 

With great respect, we are 

Your friends and servants, 

JOSEPH HOXIE, 



THOMAS FESSENDEN,! „ 

J. PRESCOTT HALL, > Comrmltee. 

EDWARD S. GOULD, 



Robert C. WmxHRor, Esii. 



Boston, January 10, 1840. 
Gentlemen, 

I am deeply indebted to the New England Society in the City of New York, for 
the favor with which they received my Address on the 23d ult., and to yourselves for the 
flattering terms in which you have requested a copy for the press. I have no hope that, on 
perusal, it will answer the expectations which such terms and such a reception would seem 
to justify ; — but I cannot refuse to submit it to your disposal. 
I am, very respectfully, , 

Your obedient servant and friend, 

ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 
Joseph Hoxie, Esq., and others, Committee, &c. 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1840, 

By Perkins «fc Marvin, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 



ADDRESS. 



Towards the close of the year 1558, about 
281 years ago, a little more than nine times the 
period which has been commonly assigned as the 
term of a generation, and only four times the three 
score years and ten which have been Divinely 
allotted to the life of man, a Virgin Princess 
ascended the throne of England. Inheriting, to- 
gether with the throne itself, a full measure of that 
haughty and overbearing spirit which characterized 
the Royal race from which she sprang, she could 
not brook the idea of any partition of her power, 
or any control over her person. She seemed re- 
solved that that race should end with her, and that 
the crown which it had so nobly won on Bosworth 
Field should seek a new channel of succession, 
rather than it should be deprived, in her person 
and through any accident of her sex, of one jot 
or tittle of that high prerogative, which it had now 
enjoyed for nearly a century. She seemed to 
prefer, not only to hold, herself, a barren sceptre — 
no heir of her's succeeding — but even to let that 
sceptre fall into the hands of the issue of a hated, 



after a reign of iive-and-forty years, that whole 
Continent, through all its yet unmeasured latitudes 
and longitudes, from the confines of Labrador to 
the Mexican Gulf, was known by no other title, 
than that which thus marked it as the dominion 
of a Maiden Queen. 

But it was that Queen's dominion only in name. 
Four times, indeed, she had essayed to people it 
and plant her banners there. But in vain. Sir 
Humphrey Gilbert, to whom the first patent for 
this purpose was granted, being compelled to return 
prematurely to England by the disasters he had 
experienced on the coast of Newfoundland, was 
lost in a storm on the homeward passage, and all 
that survived of his gallant enterprise, was that 
sublime exclamation, as he sat in the stern of his 
sinking bark — ' It is as near to Heaven by sea as 
by land.' — By the resolute and undaunted efforts 
of his illustrious brother-in-law. Sir Walter Raleigh, 
however, three separate companies of Colonists 
were afterwards conducted to the more Southern 
parts of the Continent, and each in succession 
commenced a settlement at Roanoake Bay. But 
two of them perished on the spot, without leaving 
behind them even so much as the means of ascer- 
taining whether they had owed their destruction 
to force or to famine ; — while the third, which, 
indeed, was the first in order, within a year from 
its departure, returned in disgust to its native land. 
And the whole result of Virginia Colonization and 
Virginia Commerce, upon which such unbounded 



hopes of glory and of gain had been hung by 
Raleigh and cherished by the Queen, had hitherto 
consisted in the introduction into England, by this 
last named band of emigrants returning home in 
despair, of a few hundreds of tobacco, and in Queen 
Elizabeth herself becoming one of Raleigh's pupils 
in that most maidenly and most Queenly accom- 
plishment — smolcmg a pipe. Not one subject did 
Elizabeth leave at her death in that wide spread 
Continent, which she had thus destined to the honor 
of perpetuating the memory of her haughty and 
ambitious virginity. 

Within a year or two past, a second Maiden 
Queen has ascended the throne which the first 
exchanged for a grave in 1603. And when she 
casts her eye back, as she can scarcely fail fre- 
quently to do, to the days of her illustrious proto- 
type, and compares the sceptre which Elizabeth 
so boldly swayed for nearly half a century with 
that which trembles in her girlish hand, she may 
console herself with the reflection, that if the 
strength and potency of her own are greatly in- 
ferior, its reach and sweep are, practically at least, 
vastly more extended. She sees the immediate 
successor to Elizabeth, uniting the crowns of Eng- 
land and Scotland, and preparing the way for that 
perfect consolidation of the two Countries which 
another Century was destined to complete. Ire- 
land, too, she finds no longer held by the tenure 
of an almost annual conquest, but included in the 
bonds of the same great Union. While beyond 



8 

the boundaries of the Imperial Homestead, she 
beholds her Power bestriding the World like a 
Colossus, a foot on either Hemisphere — in one, 
military posts and colonial possessions hailing her 
accession and acknowledging her sway, which were 
without even a name or local habitation in the 
history of the World as Raleigh wrote it — and 
in the other, a Company of Adventurers which 
Elizabeth chartered a few years before her death, 
to try the experiment of a trade with the East 
Indies by the newly discovered passage round the 
Cape of Good Hope, converted from a petty Mer- 
cantile Corporation into a vast Military Empire, 
and holding in her name and expending in her 
service territorial dominions and revenues equal to 
those of the most powerful Independent Monarchies. 
But where is Virginia? Where is the 'ancient 
dominion ' upon which her great Exemplar in- 
scribed the substance of that ' maiden meditation ' 
which even now, mayhap, is mingled with the 
weightier cares of majesty in her own breast ? 
Have all attempts to plant and colonize it proved 
still unsuccessful ? Is it still unreclaimed from 
original barbarism, — still only the abode of wolves 
and wild men ? And why is it not found on the 
map of the British possessions — why not comprised 
in the catalogue of Her Majesty's Colonies? Two 
centuries and a third ago only, when Elizabeth 
quitted the throne, it was there, unsettled indeed 
and with not a civilized soul upon its soil, but 
opening its boundless territories to the adventure 



and enterprise of the British People, and destined 
to all human appearances to be one day counted 
among the brightest jewels in the crowns of the 
British Princes. Why is it not now seen sparkling 
in that which encircles her brow ? 

If we might imagine the youthful Victoria, led 
along by the train of reflections which we have 
thus suggested, and snatching a moment from the 
anxious contemplation of Colonies which she is in 
immediate danger of losing, to search after those 
which have been lost to her already, — if we might 
imagine her turning back the page of History to 
the period of the first Stuart, to discover what 
became of the Virginia of Elizabeth after her death, 
how it was finally planted, and how it passed from 
beneath the sceptre of her successors, — if we might 
be indulged in a far less natural imagination, and 
fancy ourselves admitted at this moment to the 
Royal presence, and, with something more even 
than the ordinary boldness of Yankee curiosity, 
peering over the Royal shoulder, as, impatient at 
the remembrance of losses sustained and still more 
so at the prospect of like losses impending, she 
hurries over the leaves on which the fortunes of 
that Virginia are recorded, and the fortunes of all 
other Virginias foreshadowed, — what a scene should 
we find unfolding itself to her view ! 

She sees, at a glance, a permanent settlement 
effected there, and James the First, more fortunate 
than his mother's murderer, inscribing a name not 
on a mere empty Territory only, but on an or- 

2 



10 

ganized and inhabited Town. A page onward^ 
she perceives a second and entirely separate settle- 
ment accomplished in a widely distant quarter of 
the Continent, and the cherished title of New 
England is now presented to her view. Around 
these two original footholds of civilization, she sees 
a hardy, enterprising and chivalrous people rapidly 
clustering, while other settlements are simulta- 
neously established along the territory which divides 
them. Thousands of miles of coast, with their 
parallel ranges of interior Country, are soon seen 
thickly studded over with populous and flourishing 
plantations. The population of them all, which 
had run up from to 300,000 by the close of the 
17th century, is found advanced to more than two 
millions by the close of the 18th. And another 
page displays to her kindling gaze thirteen as noble 
Colonies as the Sun ever shone upon, with nearly 
three millions of inhabitants, all acknowledging 
their allegiance to the British Crown, all con- 
tributing their unmatched energies to the support 
and extension of the British Commerce, and all 
claiming, as their most valued birthright, the liberties 
and immunities of the British Constitution. Ah ! 
did the volume but end there ! But she perceives, 
as she proceeds, that in a rash hour those liberties 
and immunities were denied them. Resistance, 
War, Independence, in letters of blood now start 
up bewilderingly to her sight. And where the 
Virginia of Elizabeth was, two centuries and a 
third ago, a waste and howling wilderness upon 



11 

which civilized man was as yet unable to maintain 
himself a moment — she next beholds an Independent 
and United Nation of sixteen millions of Freemen, 
with a Commerce second only to her own, and 
with a Country, a Constitution, an entire condition 
of men and things, which from all previous ex- 
perience in the growth of Nations, ought to have 
been the fruit of at least a thousand years, and 
would have been regarded as the thrifty produce 
of a Millennium well employed ! 

Gentlemen of the New England Society and 
Fellow Citizens of New York, of this wonderful 
rise and progress of our Country, from the merely 
nominal and embryo existence which it had ac- 
quired at the dawn of the 17th Century, to the 
mature growth, the substantial prosperity, the in- 
dependent greatness and National grandeur in which 
it is now beheld, we this day commemorate a main, 
original spring. The 22d of December, 1620, was 
not the mere birthday of a Town or a Colony. 
Had it depended for its distinction upon events 
like these, it would have long ago ceased to be 
memorable. The Town which it saw planted, is 
indeed still in existence, standing on the very site 
which the Pilgrims selected, and containing within 
its limits an honest, industrious and virtuous people, 
not unworthy of the precious scenes and hallowed 
associations to whose enjoyment they have suc- 
ceeded. But possessing, as it did originally, no 
peculiar advantages either of soil, locality or climate, 



12 

and outstripped, as it naturally has been, in wealth, 
size, population and importance, by thousands of 
other Towns all over the Continent, it would 
scarcely suffice to perpetuate beyond its own im- 
mediate precincts, the observance, or even the 
remembrance of a day, of whose doings it con- 
stituted the only monument ; while the Colony 
of whose establishment that day was also the com- 
mencement, has long since ceased to enjoy any 
separate political existence. As if to rescue its 
Founders from the undeserved fortune of being 
only associated in the memory of posterity with 
the settlers of individual States, and to insure for 
them a name and a praise in all quarters of the 
Country, the Colony of New Plymouth never 
reached the dignity of Independent Sovereignty to 
which almost all its sister Colonies were destined, 
and is now known only as the fraction of a County 
of a Commonwealth which was founded by other 
hands. 

Yes, the event which occurred two hundred and 
nineteen years ago yesterday, was of wider import 
than the confines of New Plymouth. The area of 
New England, greater than that of Old England, 
has yet proved far too contracted to comprehend all 
its influences. They have been coextensive with 
our country. They have pervaded our Continent. 
They have passed the Isthmus. They have climbed 
the farthest Andes. They have crossed the Ocean. 
The seeds of the Mayflower, wafted by the winds 
of Heaven, or borne in the Eagle's beak, have been 



13 

scattered far and wide over the Old world as well 
as over the New. The suns of France or Italy 
have not scorched them. The frosts of Russia 
have not nipped them. The fogs of Germany have 
not blighted them. They have sprung up in every 
latitude, and borne fruit, some twenty, some fifty, 
and some an hundred fold. And though so often 
struck down and crushed beneath the iron tread of 
arbitrary Power, they are still ineradicably imbed- 
ded in every soil, and their leaves are still destined 
to be for the healing of all Nations. Oh, could only 
some one of the pious Fathers whose wanderings 
were this day brought to an end, be permitted to 
enter once more upon these earthly scenes ; could 
he, like the pious Father of ancient Rome, guided 
by some guardian spirit and covered with a cloud, 
be conducted, I care not to what spot beneath the 
sky, how might he exclaim, as he gazed, not with 
tears of anguish but of rapture, not on some empty 
picture of Pilgrim sorrows and Pilgrim struggles, 
but upon the living realities of Pilgrim influence 
and Pilgrim achievement — ' Quis locus — Quce regio 
— What place, what region upon earth is there, which 
is not full of the products of our labors ! Where, 
where, has not some darkness been enlightened, 
some oppression alleviated, some yoke broken or 
chain loosened, some better views of God's worship 
or man's duty, of Divine Law or human rights, 
been imparted by our principles or inspired by our 
example !' 

This Country, Fellow Citizens, has in no respect 



14 

more entirely contravened all previous experience 
in human affairs, than in affording materials for 
the minutest details in the history of its earliest 
ages. I should rather say, of its earliest days^ 
for it has had no ages, and days have done for it, 
what ages have been demanded for elsewhere. 
But, whatever the periods of its existence may be 
termed, they are all historical periods. Its whole 
birth, growth, being, are before us. We are not 
compelled to resort to cunningly devised fables to 
account either for its origin or advancement. We 
can trace back the current of its career to the very 
rock from which it first gushed. 

Yet how like a fable does it seem, how even 
' stranger than fiction,' to speak of the event which 
we this day commemorate, as having exerted any 
material influence on the destinies of our Country, 
much more as having in any degree affected the ex- 
isting condition of the world ! This ever-memorable, 
ever-glorious landing of the Pilgrims, how, where, 
by what numbers, under what circumstances was it 
made ? From what invincible Armada did the 
Fathers of New England disembark ? With what 
array of disciplined armies did they line the shore ? 
Warned by the fate which had so frequently be- 
fallen other Colonists on the same Coast, what 
batteries did they bring to defend them from the 
incursions of a merciless foe, what stores to preserve 
them from the invasions of a not more merciful 
famine ? 

In the whole history of Colonization, ancient or 



15 

modern, no feebler Company, either in point of 
numbers, armament, or supplies, can be found, than 
that which landed, on the day we commemorate, 
on these American shores. Forty-one men, — of 
whom two, at least, came over only in the capacity 
of servants to others, and who manifested their title 
to be counted among the Fathers of New England 
within a {'ew weeks after their arrival, by fighting 
with sword and dagger the first Duel which stands 
recorded on the annals of the New World, for which 
they were adjudged to be tied together neck and 
heels and so to lie for four and twenty hours with- 
out meat or drink — forty-one men, — of whom one 
more, at least, had been shuffled into the ship's 
company at London, nobody knew by whom, and 
who even more signally vindicated his claim no long 
time after, to be enumerated among this pious. Pil- 
grim Band, by committing the first murder and 
gracing the first gallows of which there is any 
memorial in our Colonial History — forty-one men, 
all told, — with about sixty women and children, 
one of whom had been born during the passage and 
another in the harbor before they landed, — in a 
single ship, of only one hundred and eighty tons 
burthen, whose upper works had proved so leaky, 
and whose middle beam had been so bowed and 
wracked by the cross winds and fierce storms which 
they encountered during the first half of the voyage, 
that but for ' a great iron screw ' which one of the 
passengers had brought with him from Holland and 
by which they were enabled to raise the beam into 



16 

its place again, they must have turned back in 
despair — conducted, after a four months' passage 
upon the Ocean, either by the ignorance or the 
treachery of their Pilot, to a Coast widely different 
from that which they had themselves selected, and 
entirely out of the jurisdiction of the Corporation 
from which they had obtained their Charter — and 
landing at last, — after a four weeks' search along 
the shore for a harbor in which they could land at 
all, — at one moment wearied out with wading above 
their knees in the icy surf, at another tired with 
travelling up and down the steep hills and valleys 
covered with snow, at a third, dashed upon the 
breakers in a foundering shallop whose sails, masts, 
rudder, had been successively carried away in a 
squall, with the spray of the sea frozen on them 
until their clothes looked as if they were glazed 
and felt like coats of iron, and having in all their 
search seen little else but graves, and received no 
other welcome but a shout of savages and a shower 
of arrows — landing at last, with a scanty supply of 
provisions for immediate use, and with ten bushels 
of corn for planting in the ensuing spring, which 
they had dug out of the sand-hills where the Indians 
had hidden it, and without which they would have 
been in danger of perishing, but for which, it is 
carefully recorded, they gave the owners entire 
content about six months after — landing at last, in 
the depth of winter, with grievous colds and coughs 
and the seeds of those illnesses which quickly 
proved the death of many — upon a bleak and storm- 



17 

beaten Rock, — a fit emblem of most of the soil by 
which it was surrounded — this^ this, is a plain, un- 
varnished story of that day's transaction, — this was 
the triumphal entry of the New England Fathers 
upon the theatre of their glory ! — What has saved 
it from being the theme of ridicule and contempt ? 
What has rescued it from being; handed down 
through all history, as a wretched effort to compass 
a mighty end by paltry and utterly inadequate 
means? What has screened it from being stigma- 
tized forever as a Quixotic sally of wild and hare- 
brained enthusiasts ? 

Follow this feeble, devoted band, to the spot 
which they have at length selected for their habita- 
tion. See them felling a few trees, sawing and 
carrying the timber, and building the first New 
England house, of about twenty feet square, to 
receive them and their goods — and see that house, 
the earliest product of their exhausted energies, 
within a fortnight after it was finished, and on the 
very morning it was for the first time to have been 
the scene of their wilderness worship, burnt in an 
instant to the ground. 

They have chosen a Governor — one whom of all 
others they respect and love — but his care and pains 
were so great for the common good, as therewith it 
is thought he oppressed himself, and shortened his 
days, and one morning, early in the spring, he came 
out of the cornfields, where he had been toiling 
with the rest, sick, and died. They have elected 
another ; but who is there now to be governed ? 

3 



18 

They have chosen a Captain, too, and appointed 
Military Orders ; but who is there now to be armed 
and marched to battle ? At the end of three months 
a full half of the Company are dead — of one hun- 
dred persons scarce fifty remain, and of those, the 
living are scarce able to bury the dead, the well not 
sufficient to tend the sick. Were there no graves 
in England, that they have thus come out to die in 
the wilderness ? 

But, doubtless, the diminution of their numbers 
has, at least, saved them from all fear of famine. 
Their little cornfields have yielded a tolerable crop, 
and the autumn finds such as have survived, in com- 
parative health and plenty. And now, the first 
arrival of a ship from England rejoices them not a 
little. Once more they are to hear from home, 
from those dear families and friends which they 
have left behind them, to receive tokens of their 
remembrance in supplies sent to their relief, per- 
haps to behold some of them face to face coming 
over to share in their lonely exile. Alas ! one of 
the best friends to their enterprise has, indeed, 
come over, and brought five-and-thirty persons to 
live in their plantation — but the ship is so poorly 
furnished with provisions, that they are forced to 
spare her some of theirs to carry her back, while 
not her passengers only, but themselves too, are 
soon threatened with starvation. The whole Com- 
pany are forthwith put upon half allowance ; — but 
the famine, notwithstanding, begins to pinch. They 
look hard for a supply, but none arrives. They spy 



19 

a boat at sea ; it is nearing the shore ; it comes to 
land; — it brings — a letter; — it brings more; — it 
brings seven passengers to join them; — more 
mouths to eat, but no food, no hope of any. — But 
they have begged, at last, of a fisherman at the 
Eastward, as much bread as amounts to a quarter 
of a pound per day till harvest, and with that they 
are sustained and satisfied. 

And now, the Narragansetts, many thousands 
strong, begin to breathe forth threatenings and 
slaughter against them, mocking at their weakness 
and challenging them to the contest. And when 
they look for the arrival of more friends from 
England, to strengthen them in this hour of peril, 
they find a disorderly, unruly band of fifty or sixty 
worthless fellows coming amongst them to devour 
their substance, to waste and steal their corn, and 
by their thefts and outrages upon the natives, also, 
to excite them to fresh and fiercer hostilities. 

Turn to the fate of their first mercantile ad- 
venture. The ship which arrived in their harbor 
next after the Mayflower had departed, and which, 
as we have seen, involved them in the dangers 
and distresses of a famine, has been laden with 
the proceeds of their traffic with the Indians, and 
with the fruits of their own personal toil. The 
little cargo consists of two hogsheads of beaver 
and other skins, and good clapboards as full as she 
can hold — the freight estimated in all at near five 
hundred pounds. — What emotions of pride, what 
expectations of profit, went forth with that little 



20 

outfit ! And how were they doomed to be dashed 
and disappointed ! Just as the ship was approaching 
the English coast, she was seized by a French 
freebooter, and robbed of all she had worth taking ! 
View them in a happier hour, in a scene of 
prosperity and success. They have a gallant warrior 
in their company, whose name, albeit it was the 
name of a little man, (for Miles Standish was 
hardly more than five feet high,) has become the 
very synonyme of a great Captain. An alarm has 
been j^iven of a conspiracy among the natives, and 
he has been empowered to enlist as many men as 
he thinks sufficient to make his party good against 
all the Indians in the Massachusetts Bay. — He has 
done so, has put an end to the conspiracy, and 
comes home laden with the spoils of an achieve- 
ment which has been styled by his biographer his 
' most capital exploit.' — How long a list of killed 
and wounded, think you, is reported as the cre- 
dentials of his bloody prowess, and how many 
men does he bring with him to share in the honors 
of the triumph ? The whole number of Indians 
slain in this expedition was six, and though the 
Pilgrim hero brought back with him in safety every 
man that he carried out, the returning host num- 
bered but eight beside their leader. He did not 
take more with him, we are told, in order to prevent 
that jealousy of military power, which, it seems, 
had already found its way to a soil it has never 
since left. But his proceedings, notwithstanding, 
by no means escaped censure. When the pious 



21 

Robinson heard of this transaction in Holland, he 
wrote to the Pilgrims ' to consider the disposition 
of their Captain, who was of a warm temper,' 
adding, however, this beautiful sentiment in rela- 
tion to the wretched race to which the victims of 
the expedition belonged — ' it would have been 
happy, if they had converted some, before they had 
killed any.' 

Inconceivable Fortune ! Unimaginable Destiny ! 
Inscrutable Providence ! Are these the details of 
an event from which such all-important, all-per- 
vading influences were to flow? Were these the 
means, and these the men, through which not New 
Plymouth only was to be planted, not New England 
only to be founded, not our whole Country only to 
be formed and moulded, but the whole Hemisphere 
to be shaped and the whole world shaken ? Yes, 
Fellow Citizens, this was the event, these were 
the means, and these the men, by which these 
mighty impulses and momentous effects actually 
have been produced. And inadequate, unadapted, 
impotent, to such ends, as to outward appearances 
they may seem, there was a Power in them and a 
Power over them amply sufficient for their accom- 
plishment, and the only powers that were thus 
sufficient. — The direct and immediate influence of 
the passengers in the Mayflower, either upon the 
destinies of our own land or of others, may, indeed, 
have been less conspicuous than that of some of the 
New England Colonists who followed them. But 
it was the bright and shining wake they left upon 



the waves, it was the clear and brilliant beacon 
they lighted upon the shores, that caused them to 
have any followers. They were the pioneers in 
that peculiar path of emigration which alone con- 
ducted to these great results. They, as was written 
to them by their brethren in the very outset of their 
enterprize, were the instruments to break the ice 
for others, and theirs shall be the honor unto the 
world's end ! 

When the Pilgrim Fathers landed upon Plymouth 
Rock, one hundred and twenty-eight years had 
elapsed since the discovery of the New World by 
Columbus. — During this long period, the Southern 
Continent of America had been the main scene of 
European adventure and enterprise. And richly 
had it repaid the exertions which had been made to 
subdue and settle it. The Empires of Montezuma 
and the Incas had surrendered themselves at the 
first summons before the chivalrous energies of 
Cortes and Pizarro, and Brazil had mingled her 
diamonds with the gold and silver of Mexico and 
Peru, to deck the triumphs and crown the rapacity 
of the Spaniard and the Portuguese. 

But the Northern Continent had been by no 
means neglected in the adventures of the day. Nor 
had those adventures been confined to the subjects 
of Portugal and Spain. The Monarchs of those 
two kingdoms, indeed, emboldened by their success 
at the South, had put forth pretensions to the sole 
jurisdiction of the whole New Hemisphere. But 



23 

Francis the First had well replied, that he should 
be glad to see the clause in Adani's fVill, which 
made the Northern Continent their exclusive inheri- 
tance, and France, under his lead, had set about 
securing for herself a share of the spoils. It was 
under French patronage that John Verazzani was 
sailing in 1524, when the harbor of New York 
especially attracted his notice for its great con- 
venience and pleasantness. 

But England, also, — with better right than either 
of the others, claiming, as she could, under the 
Cabots — had not been inattentive to the opportunity 
of enlarging her dominions, and I have already 
alluded to sundry unsuccessful attempts which were 
made by the English to effect this object, during 
the reign and under the patronage of Queen Eliza- 
beth. 

Within a few months previous to the close of her 
reign and without her patronage, Bartholomew 
Gosnold added another to the list of these unavail- 
ing efforts — having only achieved for himself the 
distinction of being the first Englishman that ever 
trod what was afterwards known as the New Eng- 
land shore, and of having given to the point of that 
shore upon which he first set foot, the homely, but 
now endeared and honored title of Cape Cod. 

Only a few years after the death of the Queen, 
however, these efforts were renewed with fresh 
zeal. As early as 1606, King James divided the 
Virginia of Elizabeth into two parts, and assigned 
the colonization of them to two separate companies, 



24 

by one of which, and especially by its President, 
the Lord Chief Justice Popham, an attempt was 
immediately made to settle the New England coast. 
A colony, indeed, was actually planted under his 
patronage, and under the personal lead of his brother, 
at Sagadahoc, near the mouth of the Kennebec 
River, in 1607. But it remained there only a 
single year, and was broken up under such dis- 
heartening circumstances, — the Colonists on their 
return branding the Country ' as over-cold and not 
habitable by our Nation,' — that the Adventurers 
gave up their designs. 

Five or six years later, notwithstanding, in 1614, 
the famous Captain John Smith, who had already, 
under the auspices of the other of the two Com- 
panies, established what afterwards proved to be, 
rather than really then was, a permanent settlement 
in Southern Virginia, having founded Jamestown in 
1607, was induced to visit and survey this Northern 
Virginia also, as it was then called. And after his 
return home, Captain Smith prepared and published 
a detailed account of the Country with a map, call- 
ing it for the first time, and as if to secure for it all 
the favor which the associations of a noble name 
could bestow, New England, and giving a most 
glowing description of the riches both of soil and 
sea, of forests and fisheries, which awaited the 
enjoyment of the settler. — ' For I am not so sim- 
ple,' said he, (fortunate, fortunate for the founda- 
tion of the Country he was describing, such sim- 
plicity was at length discovered !) ' for I am not 



25 

so simple as to think that ever any other motive 
than iveahh, will ever erect there a common weal, 
or draw company from their ease and humors at 
home to stay in New England.' 

During the following year this gallant and chival- 
rous seaman and soldier evinced the sincerity of the 
opinion which he had thus publicly expressed, as to 
the inviting character of the spot, by attempting a 
settlement there himself, and made two successive 
voyages for that purpose. But both of them were 
continued scenes of disappointments and disaster, 
and he, too, for whose lion-hearted heroism nothing 
had ever seemed too difficult, was compelled to 
acknowledge himself overmatched, and abandon the 
undertaking. 

And where now were the hopes of planting New 
England ? The friends to the enterprise were at 
their wit's end. All that the patronage of princes, 
all that the combined energies of rich and powerful 
Corporations, all that the individual efforts of the 
boldest and most experienced private Adventurers, 
stimulated by the most glowing imaginations of the 
gains which awaited their grasp, could do, had been 
done, and done in vain. Means and motives of 
this sort, had effected nothing, indeed, on the whole 
North American Continent, after more than half a 
century of uninterrupted operation, but a little 
settlement at one extremity by the Sj)anish, (St. 
Augustine in 1565,) a couple of smaller settlements 
at the other extremity by the French, (Port Royal, 
in 1605 and Quebec, in 1609,) and smaller and 

4 



26 

more precarious than either, the Jamestown settle- 
ment about midway between the two — this last 
being the only shadow — and but a shadow it was — 
of English Colonization on the whole Continent. 

But the Atlantic Coast of North America, and 
especially that part of it which was to be known as 
New England, was destined to date its ultimate 
occupation to something higher and nobler than the 
chivalry of Adventurers, the greediness of Corpora- 
tions or the ambition of Kings. The lust of new 
dominion, the thirst for treasure, the quest for spoil, 
had found an ample field, reaped an overflowing 
harvest, and rioted in an almost fatal surfeit on the 
Southern Continent. It might almost seem, in view 
of the lofty destinies which were in store for the 
Northern, in contemplation of the momentous influ- 
ences it was to exert upon the welfare of mankind 
and the progress of the world, as if Providence had 
heaped those treasures and clustered those jewels 
upon the soil of Peru and Mexico, to divert the 
interest, absorb the passions, cloy the appetite and 
glut the rapacity which were naturally aroused by 
the discovery of a New World. We might almost 
imagine the guardian Spirit of the Pilgrims com- 
missioned to cast down this golden fruit and strew 
this Hesperian harvest along the pathway of the 
newly awakened enterprise, to secure the more 
certainly for the subjects of its appointed care, the 
possession of their promised land — their dowerless, 
but chosen Atalanta. 

But I am anticipating an idea which must not be 



27 

thus summarily dismissed, and to which I may 
presently find an opportunity to do better justice. 
Meantime, however, let me remark, that we are not 
left altogether to supernatural agency for at least the 
secondary impulse under which New England was 
colonized. Nor were the earthly princes and poten- 
tates of whom I have already spoken, — Elizabeth, 
her Minister of Justice, and her successor in the 
throne, — though so signally frustrated in all their 
direct endeavors to that end, without a most pow- 
erful, though wholly indirect and involuntary, in- 
fluence, upon its final accomplishment. 

The daughter of Ann Bullen could not fail to 
cherish a most hearty and implacable hatred towards 
that Church, in defiance of whose thunders she was 
conceived and cradled, and in the eye and open 
declaration of which she was a bastard, a heretic, 
an outlaw and an usurper. So far, at any rate, 
Elizabeth was a friend to the Reformation. But 
she had almost as little notion as her Father, of any 
reformation which reached beyond releasing her 
dominions from the authority of the Pope, and 
establishing herself at the head of the Church. 
And; accordingly, the very first year of her reign 
was marked by the enactment of Laws, exacting, 
under the severest penalties, conformity to the doc- 
trines and discipline of the English Church — a 
policy which she never relinquished. 

For a violation of these Laws and others of sub- 
sequent enactment but of similar import, a large 
number of persons in her kingdom, whose minds 



28 

had been too thoroughly inspired with disgust for 
the masks and mummeries of Catholic worship, to 
be content with a bare renunciation of the temporal 
or spiritual authority of the Pope, were arrested, 
imprisoned, and treated with all manner of persecu- 
tion. At least six of them were capitally executed, 
and two of these, as it happened, were condemned 
to death by that very Lord Chief Justice, whom 
we have seen a few years afterwards, at the head 
of the Plymouth Company, engaged in so earnest 
but unavailing an effort to colonize the New Eng- 
land Coast. Little did he know that his part in 
that work had been already performed. 

In an imaginary ' Dialogue between some Young 
Men born in New England and sundry Ancient Men 
that came out of Holland and Old England,' writ- 
ten in 1648 by Gov. Bradford — a name which be- 
fore all others should be this day remembered with 
veneration — the Young Men are represented as 
asking of the Old Men, how many Separatists had 
been executed. ' We know certainly of six,' 
replied the ancient men, ' that were publicly exe- 
cuted, besides such as died in prisons. * * * Two 
of them were condemned by cruel Judge Popham, 
whose countenance and carriage was very rough 
and severe towards them, with many sharp mena- 
ces. But God gave them courage to bear it, and 
to make this answer : — 



* My Lord, your face we fear not, 
And for your threats we care not. 
And to come to your read service we dare not.' 



29 

Nor did King James depart from the footsteps of 
his predecessor in the religious policy of his ad- 
ministration. Though from his Scotch education 
and connections, and from the opinions which he 
had openly avowed before coming to the English 
throne, he had seemed pledged to a career of liber- 
ality and toleration, yet no sooner was he fairly 
seated on that throne than he, too, set about vindi- 
cating his claim to his new title of ' Defender of 
the Faith,' and enforcing conformity to the rites 
and ceremonies of the English Church. And he 
cut short a conference at Hampton Court, between 
himself and the Puritan leaders, got up at his own 
instigation in the vainglorious idea that he could 
vanquish these heretics in an argument, with this 
summary and most significant declaration — ' If this 
be all they have to say, I will make them conform, 
or I will harry them, out of the land.^ 

The idea of banishment was full of bitterness to 
those to whom it was thus sternly held up. They 
loved their native land with an affection which no 
rigor of restraint, no cruelty of persecution, could 
quench. Death itself, to some of them at least, 
seemed to have fewer fears than exile. ' We crave,' 
was the touching language of a Petition of sixty 
Separatists in 1592, who had been committed un- 
bailable to close prison in London, where they were 
allowed neither meat nor drink, nor lodging, and 
where no one was suffered to have access to them, 
so as no felons or traitors or murderers were thus 
dealt with, — ' We crave for all of us but the liberty 



30 

either to die openly or to live openly in the land of 
our nativity. If we deserve death, it beseemeth 
the majesty of justice not to see us closely mur- 
dered, yea, starved to death with hunger and cold, 
and stifled in loathsome dungeons. If we be guilt- 
less, we crave but the benefit of our innocence, that 
we may have peace to serve our God and our Prince 
in the place of the sepulchres of our Fathers.' 

But there were those among them, notwithstand- 
ing, to whom menaces, whether of banishment or of 
the block, even uttered thus angrily by one, who, 
as he once well said of himself, ' while he held the 
appointment of Judges and Bishops in his hand, 
could make what Law, and what Gospel he chose,' 
were alike powerless, to prevail on them to conform 
to modes and creeds which they did not of them- 
selves approve. They heard a voice higher and 
mightier than James's, calling to them in the 
accents of their own consciences, and saying, in the 
express language of a volume, which it had been 
the most precious result of all the discoveries, in- 
ventions and improvements of that age of wonders, 
to unlock to them — ' Be ye not conformed — but be 
ye transformed ' — and that voice, summon it to 
exile, or summon it to the grave, they were resolved 
to obey. 

Foiled, therefore, utterly in the first of his alter- 
natives, the king resorted to the last. It was more 
within the compass of his power, and he did harry 
them out of the land. Within three years after the 
utterance of this threat, (viz. in 1607,) it is re- 



31 

corded by the Chronologist, that Messrs. Clifton's 
and Robinson's church in the North of England, 
being extremely harrassed, some cast into prison, 
some beset in their houses, some forced to leave 
their farms and families, begin to fly over to Hol- 
land for purity of worship and liberty of conscience. 

Religions, true and false, have had their Hegiras, 
and Institutions and Empires have owed their origin 
to the flight of a child, a man, or a multitude. 
Moses fled from the face of Pharaoh, — but he re- 
turned to overwhelm him with the judgments of 
Jehovah, and to build up Israel into a mighty 
People. Mahomet with his followers fled from the 
Magistrates of Mecca, — but he came back, with the 
sword in one hand and the Koran in the other, and 
the Empire of the Saracens was soon second to 
none on the globe. ' The Young Child and his 
Mother' fled from the fury of Herod, — but they 
returned, and the banner of the Cross was still des- 
tined to go forth conquering and to conquer. The 
Pilgrim Fathers, also, fled from the oppression of 
this arbitrary tyrant, and, although their return was 
to a widely distant portion of his dominions, yet 
return they did, and the Freedom and Indepen- 
dence of a great Republic, delivered from the yoke 
of that tyrant's successors, date back their origin 
this day, to the principles for which they were pro- 
scribed, and to the institutions which they planted ! 

But let us follow them in their eventful flight. 
They first settle at Amsterdam, where they remain 
for about a year, and are soon joined by the rest of 



32 

their brethren. But finding that some contentions 
had arisen in a Church which was there before 
them, and fearing that they might themselves be- 
come embroiled in them, though they knew it 
would be very much ' to the prejudice of their out- 
ward interest ' to remove, yet ' valuing peace and 
spiritual comfort above all other riches ' they depart 
to Leyden, and there live ' in great love and har- 
mony both among themselves and their neighbor 
citizens for above eleven years.' 

But, although during all this time they had been 
courteously entertained and lovingly respected by 
the people, and had quietly and sweetly enjoyed 
their Church liberties under the States, yet finding 
that, owing to the difference of their language, they 
could exert but little influence over the Dutch, and 
had not yet succeeded in bringing them to reform 
the neglect of observation of the Lord's day as a 
Sabbath, or any other thing amiss among them, — 
that, owing, also, to the licentiousness of youth in 
that Country and the manifold temptations of the 
place, their children were drawn away by evil 
examples into extravagant and dangerous courses, 
they now begin to fear that Holland would be no 
place for their church and their posterity to con- 
tinue in comfortably, and on those accounts to think 
of a remove to America. And having hesitated 
a wMiile between Guiana and Virginia as a place of 
resort, and having at last resolved on the latter, they 
send their agents to treat with the Virginia Com- 
pany for a right within their chartered limits, and 



33 

to see if the King would give them liberty of con- 
science there. The Company they found ready 
enough to grant them a patent with ample privi- 
leges, but liberty of conscience under the broad seal 
King James could never be brought to bestow, and 
the most that could be extorted from him by the 
most persevering importunity was a promise, that 
he would connive at them, and not molest them, 
provided they should carry themselves peaceably. 

Notwithstanding this discouragement, however, 
they resolved to venture. And after another year 
of weary negotiation with the merchants who were 
to provide them with a passage, the day for their 
departure arrives. — It had been agreed that a part 
of the church should go before their brethren to 
America to prepare for the rest, and as the major 
part was to stay behind, it was also determined that 
their pastor, the beloved Robinson, should stay with 
them. Not only were the Pilgrims thus about to 
leave ' that goodly and pleasant City which had 
been their resting place above eleven years,' but 
to leave behind them also the greatest part of those 
with whom they had been so long and lovingly 
associated in a strange land, and this — to encounter 
all the real and all the imaginary terrors which 
belonged to that infancy of ocean navigation, to 
cross a sea of three thousand miles in breadth, 
and to reach at last a shore which had hitherto 
repelled the approaches of every civilized settler ! 
Who can describe the agonies of such a scene ? 
Their Memorialist has done it in language as satis- 

5 



34 

factory as any language can be, but the description 
still seems cold and feeble. 

' And now the time being come when they were to 
depart,' says he, ' they were accompanied with most 
of their brethren out of the City unto a Town called 
Delft Haven, where the ship lay ready to receive 
them. * * * One night was spent with little sleep with 
the most, but with friendly entertainment and Chris- 
tian discourse, and other real expressions of true 
Christian love. The next day, the wind being fair, 
they went on board, and their friends with them, 
where truly doleful was the sight of that sad and 
mournful parting, to hear what sighs and sobs and 
prayers did sound amongst them, what tears did 
gush from every eye, and pithy speeches pierced 
each others' hearts, that sundry of the Dutch 
strangers, that stood on the Key as spectators, 
could not refrain from tears. But the tide (which 
stays for no man) calling them away that were 
thus loth to depart, their reverend pastor falling 
down on his knees, and they all with him, with 
watery cheeks commended them with most fervent 
prayers unto the Lord and his blessing ; — and then 
with mutual embraces and many tears they took 
their leave of one another, which proved to be the 
last leave to many of them.' 

Such was the embarkation of the New England 
Fathers ! — Such the commencement of that Pilgrim 
Voyage, whose progress during a period of five 
months I have already described, and whose ter- 
mination we this day commemorate ! Under these 



35 

auspices and by these instruments was at last com- 
pleted an undertaking which had so long baffled the 
efforts of Statesmen and Heroes, of Corporations 
and of Kings ! Said I not rightly that the Pilgrims 
had a power within them, and a Power over them, 
which was not only amply adequate to its accom- 
plishment, but the only powers that were thus ade- 
quate ? And who requires to be reminded what 
those powers were ? 

I fear not to be charged with New England 
bigotry or Puritan fanaticism in alluding to the 
Power which was over the Pilgrims in their humble 
but heroic enterprise. If Washington, in reviewing 
the events of our Revolutionary history, could say 
to the American Armies as he quitted their com- 
mand, that 'the singular interpositions of Providence 
in our feeble condition were such as could scarcely 
escape the attention of the most unobserving,' and 
again to the American Congress, on first assuming 
the administration of the Union, that 'every step 
by which the People of the United States had 
advanced to the character of an Independent Nation 
seemed to have been distinguished by some token 
of Providential agency,' how much less can any 
one be in danger of subjecting himself to the im- 
putation of indulging in a wild conceit or yielding 
to a weak superstition, by acknowledging, by as- 
serting, a Divine intervention in the history of New 
England Colonization. It were easy, it is true, 
to convey the same sentiment in more fashionable 
phraseology — to disguise an allusion to a Wonder- 



working: Providence under the name of an ex- 
traordinary Fortune or cloak the idea of a Divine 
appointment under the title of a lucky accident. 
But I should feel that I dishonored the memory 
of our New England sires, and deserved the re- 
buke of their assembled sons, were I, on an occa- 
sion like the present, to resort to such miserable 
paltering. 

No — I see something more than mere fortunate 
accidents or extraordinary coincidences in the whole 
discovery and colonization of our Country — in the 
age at which these events took place, in the People 
by whom they were effected, and more especially in 
the circumstances by which they were attended, and 
may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth if 
ever I am ashamed to say so ! 

When I reflect that this entire Hemisphere of 
ours remained so long in a condition of primeval 
barbarism — that the very existence of its vast Con- 
tinents was so long concealed from the knowledge 
of civilized man — that these colossal mountains so 
long lifted their summits to the sky and cast their 
shadows across the earth — that these gigantic rivers 
so long poured their mighty, matchless waters to the 
sea — that these magnificent forests so long waved 
their unrivalled foliage to the winds, and these 
luxuriant fields and prairies so long spread out 
their virgin sods before the sun — without a single 
intelligent human being to enjoy, to admire, or 
even to behold them — when I reflect to what heights 
of civilization, ambition and power so many of the 



37 

Nations of the Old World were successively ad- 
vanced, reaching a perfection in some branches of 
art and of science which has destined their very 
ruins to be the wonder, the delight, the study and 
the models of mankind for ever, and pushing their 
Commerce and their Conquests over sea and shore 
with an energy so seemingly indomitable and illimi- 
table, and yet that these seas and these shores, 
reserved for other Argonauts than those of Greece 
and other Eagles than those of Rome, were pro- 
tected alike from the reach of their arts and their 
arms, from their rage for glory and their lust for 
spoils — when I reflect that all the varieties of roam- 
ing tribes which, up to the period of the events of 
which I speak, had found their way nobody knows 
when or from whence, to this Northern Continent 
at least, were so mysteriously endowed with a 
nature, not merely to make no progress in im- 
provement and settlement of themselves, but even 
to resist and defy every influence which could be 
brought to bear upon them by others, except such 
as tended to their own extirpation and overthrow — 
how they shrank at the approach of the civilized 
settler, melting away as they retired, and marking 
the trail of their retreat, I had almost said, by the 
scent of their own graves — or, if some stragglers of 
a race less barbarous, at some uncertain epoch, were 
brought unknowingly upon our shores, that, instead 
of stamping the Rock upon which they landed with 
the unequivocal foot-prints of the Fathers of a mighty 
Nation, they only scratched upon its surface a iew 



38 

illegible characters, to puzzle the future antiquary to 
decide whether they were of Scandinavian or of Car- 
thaginian, of Runic or of Punic origin, and to prove 
only this distinctly — that their authors were not 
destined to be the settlers, or even the discoverers, 
in any true sense of that term, of the Country upon 
which they had thus prematurely stumbled — when I 
reflect upon the momentous changes in the institu- 
tions of society and in the instruments of human 
power, which were crowded within the period which 
was ultimately signalized by this discovery and this 
settlement — the press, by its magic enginery, breaking 
down every barrier and annihilating every monopoly 
in the paths of knowledge, and proclaiming all men 
equal in the arts of peace — giinpoivder, by its tre- 
mendous properties, undermining the moated castles 
and rending asunder the plaited mail of the lordly 
Chieftains, and making all men equal on the field 
of battle — the Bible, rescued from its unknown 
tongues, its unauthorized interpretations and its un- 
worthy perversions, opened at length in its original 
simplicity and purity to the world, and proving that 
all men were born equal in the eye of God — when 
I see learning reviving from its lethargy of centuries, 
religion reasserting its native majesty, and liberty 
— liberty itself — thus armed and thus attended, 
starting up anew to its long suspended career, and 
exclaiming, as it were, in the confidence of its new 
instruments and its new auxiliaries — ' Give me now 
a place to stand upon — -a place free from the in- 
terference of established power, a place free from 



39 

the embarrassment of ancient abuses, a place free 
from the paralyzing influence of a jealous and over- 
bearing prerogative — give me but a place to stand 
upon and I loill tnove the world ' — I cannot consider 
it, I cannot call it, a mere fortunate coincidence, 
that then, at that very instant, the veil of waters 
was lifted up, that place revealed, and the world 
moved ! 

When 1 reflect, too, on the Nation under whose 
reluctant auspices this revelation was finally vouch- 
safed to the longing vision of the intrepid Admiral — ■ 
how deeply it was already plunged in the grossest 
superstitions and sensualities, how darkly it was 
already shadowed by the impending horrors of its 
Dread Tribunal, and how soon it was to lose the 
transient lustre which might be reflected upon it 
from the virtues of an Isabella, or the genius of a 
Charles V., and to sink into a long and rayless 
night of ignorance and oppression — when I look 
back upon its sister kingdom of the Peninsula, also, 
which shared with it in reaping the teeming first 
fruits of the new found world, and find them match- 
ing each other not more nearly in the boldness of 
their maritime enterprise, than in the sternness of 
their religious bigotry and in the degradation of their 
approaching doom — and when I remember how both 
of these kingdoms, from any Colonies of whose 
planting there could have been so poor a hope of 
any early or permanent advancement to the cause of 
human freedom, were attracted and absorbed by the 
mineral and vegetable treasures of the tropical islands 



40 

and territories and by the gorgeous empires which 
spirits of congenial grossness and sensuality had 
already established there — while this precise portion 
of America, these noble harbors, these glorious hills, 
these exhaustless valleys and matchless lakes, pre- 
senting a combination of climate and of soil, of 
land course and water course, marked and quoted 
as it were, by Nature herself, for the abode of a 
great, united and prosperous Republic — the rock- 
bound region of New England not excepted from 
the category, which, though it can boast of nothing 
nearer akin to gold or diamonds than the sparkling 
mica of its granite or the glittering crystals of its 
ice, was yet framed to produce a wealth richer than 
gold, and whose price is above rubies — the intelli- 
gent and virtuous industry of a free people — when I 
remember, I say, how this exact portion of the new 
world was held back for more than a century after 
its discovery, and reserved for the occupation and 
settlement of the only Nation under the sun able to 
furnish the founders of such a Republic and the 
progenitors of such a People — the very Nation in 
which the reforms and inventions of the day had 
wrought incomparably the most important results, 
and human improvement and human liberty made 
incalculably the largest advance — I cannot regard it, 
I cannot speak of it, as a mere lucky accident, that 
this Atlantic seaboard was settled by colonies of the 
Anglo-Saxon race ! 

And when, lastly, 1 reflect on the circumstances 
under which this settlement was in the end effected, 



41 

on that part of the coast, more especially, which 
exerted a paramount influence on the early destinies 
of the Continent, and gave the first unequivocal 
assurance that virtue and industry and freedom were 
here to find a refuge and here to found themselves 
an empire — when I behold a feeble company of 
exiles, quitting the strange land to which persecution 
had forced them to flee, entering with so many sighs 
and sobs and partings and prayers on a voyage so 
full of perils at the best, but rendered a hundred fold 
more perilous by the unusual severities of the season 
and the absolute unseaworthiness of their ship, 
arriving in the depth of winter on a coast to which 
even their pilot was a perfect stranger, and where 
' they had no friends to welcome them, no inns to 
entertain them, no houses, much less towns, to repair 
unto for succor,' but where, — instead of friends, 
shelter or refreshment, — famine, exposure, the wolf, 
the savage, disease and death seemed waiting for 
them — and yet accomplishing an end which Royalty 
and patronage, the love of dominion and of gold, 
individual adventure and corporate enterprise had so 
long essayed in vain, and founding a Colony which 
was to defy alike the machinations and the menaces 
of Tyranny, in all periods of its history — it needs 
not, it needs not, that I should find the coral path- 
way of the sea laid bare, and its waves a wall upon 
the right hand and the left, and the crazed chariot 
wheels of the oppressor floating in fragments upon 
its closing floods, to feel, to realize, that higher than 
6 



42 

human was the Power which presided over the 
Exodus of the Pilgrim Fathers ! 

Was it not something more than the ignorance or 
the self-will of an earthly and visible Pilot, which, 
instead of conducting them to the spot which they 
had deliberately selected — the very spot on which 
we are now assembled — the banks of your own 
beautiful Hudson, of which they had heard so much 
during their sojourn in Holland, but which w^ere 
then swarming with a host of horrible savages — 
guided them to a coast, which though bleaker and 
far less hospitable in its outward aspect, had yet by 
an extraordinary epidemic, but a short time previous, 
been almost completely cleared of its barbarous ten- 
ants ? Was it not something more, also, than mere 
mortal error or human mistake, which, instead of 
bringing them within the limits prescribed in the 
patent they had procured in England, directed them 
to a shore on which they were to land upon their 
own responsibility and under their own authority, 
and thus compelled them to an Act, which has ren- 
dered Cape Cod more memorable than Runnamede, 
and the Cabin of the Mayflower than the proudest 
Hall of ancient Charter or modern Constitution — the 
execution of the first written original Contract of 
Democratic Self-Government which is found in the 
annals of the World ? 

But the Pilgrims, I have said, had a power within 
them also. If God was not seen among them in 
the fire of a Horeb, or the earthquake of a Sinai, 
or the wind cleaving asunder the waves of the sea 



43 

they were to cross, He was with them, at least, in 
the stil!, small voice. Conscience, Conscience, was 
the nearest to an earthly power which the Pilgrims 
possessed, and the freedom of Conscience the nearest 
to an earthly motive which prompted their career. 
It was Conscience, which ' weaned them from the 
delicate milk of their Mother country and inured 
them to the difficulties of a strange land.' It was 
Conscience, which made them ' not as other men, 
whom small things could discourage, or small dis- 
contentments cause to wish themselves at home 
again.' It was Conscience — that ^ rohur et cbs 
triplex circa pectus ' — which emboldened them to 
launch their fragile bark upon a merciless ocean, 
fearless of the fighting winds and lowering storms. 
It was Conscience, which stiffened them to brave 
the perils, endure the hardships, undergo the depri- 
vations of a howling, houseless, hopeless desolation. 
And thus, almost in the very age when the Great 
Master of human nature, was putting into the mouth 
of one of his most interesting and philosophical char- 
acters, that well remembered conclusion of a cele- 
brated soliloquy — 

' Thus Conscience does make cowards of us all, 
And thus the native hue of resolution 
Is sicklied o'ei* with the pale cast of thought, 
And enterprises of great pith and moment 
With this regard, their currents turn awry, 
And lose the name of action — ' 

this very Conscience, a clog and an obstacle indeed, 
to its foes, but the surest strength and sharpest spur 



44 

of its friends, was inspiring a courage, confirming a 
resolution, and accomplishing an enterprise, of which 
the records of the world will be searched in vain to 
find a parallel. Let it never be forgotten, that it 
was Conscience, and that, not entrenched behind 
broad seals, but enshrined in brave souls, which car- 
ried through and completed the long baffled under- 
taking; of settling the New England coast. 

But Conscience did more than this. It was that 
same still, small voice, which, under God, and 
through the instrumentality of the Pilgrims, pro- 
nounced the very Fiat of light in the creation of 
civilized society on this whole Northern Continent 
of America, exerting an influence in the process 
of that creation, compared with which all previous 
influences were but so many movings on the face of 
the waters. 

Let me not be thought, in this allusion and others 
like it in which I have already indulged, to slight 
the claims of the Virginia Colony, or to do designed 
injustice to its original settlers. There are laurels 
enough growing wild upon the graves of Plymouth, 
without tearing a leaf from those of Jamestown. 
New England does not require to have other parts 
of the country cast into shade, in order that the 
brightness of her own early days may be seen and 
admired. Least of all, would any son of New 
England be found uttering a word in wanton dis- 
paragement of 'our noble, patriotic, sister Colony 
Virginia,' as she was once justly termed by the 
Patriots of Faneuil Hall. There are circumstances 



45 

of peculiar and beautiful correspondence in the 
careers of Virginia and New England, which must 
ever constitute a bond of sympathy, affection and 
pride between their children. Not only did they 
form respectively the great Northern and Southern 
rallying-points of civilization on this Continent — 
not only was the most friendly competition, or the 
most cordial cooperation, as circumstances allowed, 
kept up between them during their early colonial 
existence — but who forgets the generous emulation, 
the noble rivalry with which they continually 
challenged and seconded each other in resisting 
the first beginnings of British aggression, in the 
persons of their James Otises and Patrick Henrys ? 
Who forgets, that, while that resistance was first 
brought to a practical test in New England, at 
Lexington and Concord and Bunker Hill, fortune, 
as if resolved to restore the balance of renown 
between the two, reserved for the Yorktown of 
Virginia the last crowning victory of Independence? 
Who forgets that, while the hand, by which the 
original Declaration of that Independence was 
drafted, was furnished by Virginia, the tongue by 
which the adoption of that Instrument was defended 
and secured, was supplied by New England — a bond 
of common glory, upon which not death alone 
seemed to set his seal, but Deity, I had almost said, 
to affix an immortal sanction, when the spirits by 
which that hand and tongue were moved, were 
caught up together to the clouds on the same great 
day of the Nation's Jubilee. Nor let me omit to 



46 

allude to a peculiar distinction which belongs to Vir- 
ginia alone. It is her preeminent honor and pride, 
that the name which the whole country acknowl- 
edges as that of a Father, she can claim as that of a 
Son — a name at which comparison ceases — to which 
there is nothing similar, nothing second — a name 
combining in its associations all that was most pure 
and godly in the nature of the Pilgrims, with all that 
was most brave and manly in the character of the 
Patriots — a name above every name in the annals 
of human liberty ! 

But I cannot refrain from adding, that not more 
does the fame of Washington surpass that of every 
other public character which America or the world 
at large, has yet produced, than the New England 
Colony, in its origin and its influences, its objects 
and its results, excels that from which Washington 
was destined to proceed. 

In one point, indeed, and that, it is true, a point 
of no inconsiderable moment, the Colonies of James- 
town and Plymouth were alike. — Both were colonies 
of Englishmen ; — and in running down the history 
of our Country from its first colonization to the 
present hour, I need hardly say that no single 
circumstance can be found, which has exercised 
a more propitious and elevating influence upon its 
fortunes, than the English origin of its settlers. 
Not to take up time in discussing either the abstract 
adaptation of the Anglo-Saxon character to the 
circumstances of a New Country, or its relative 
capacity for the establishi^ent and enjoyment of 



47 

Free Institutions, — the most cursory glance at the 
comparative condition, past or present, of those 
portions of the New World, which were planted 
by other nations, is amply sufficient to illustrate 
this idea. Indeed, our own Continent affords an 
illustration of it, impressed upon us anew by recent 
events in the Canadian Colonies, which renders any 
reference to the other entirely superfluous. The 
contrast between the social, moral and intellectual 
state of the two parts of North America which were 
peopled respectively by Englishmen and Frenchmen, 
has been often alluded to. But a comparison of 
their political conditions exhibits diflerences still 
more striking. 

Go back to the period immediately preceding the 
Stamp Act, and survey the circumstances of the 
two portions of Country, as they then existed. 
Both are in a state of Colonial dependence on 
Great Britain. But the one has just been reduced 
to that state by force of arms. Its fields and 
villages have just been the scenes of the pillage 
and plunder which always march in the train of 
conquest — the allegiance of their owners has been 
violently transferred to new masters as the penalty 
of defeat — and to keep alive the more certainly the 
vindictive feelings which belong to the bosoms of a 
vanquished people, and to frustrate the more entirely 
the natural influences of time and custom in healing 
up the wounds which such a subjugation has in- 
flicted, the laws of their conquerors are enacted and 
administered in a strange tongue, and one which 



continually reminds them that the yoke under which 
they have passed, is that of a Nation towards which 
thev have an hereditary hatred. — The People of the 
other portion, on the contrary, owe their relation to 
the common Sovereign of them both, to nothing 
but their own natural and voluntary choice — feel 
towards the Nation over which he presides nothing 
but the attachment and veneration of children towards 
the parent of their pride, and are bound to it by 
the powerful ties of a common history, a common 
language, and a common blood. Tell me, now, 
which of the two will soonest grow impatient of 
its colonial restraint, soonest throw off its foreign 
subordination, and soonest assert itself free and in- 
dependent ? 

And what other solution can any one suggest 
to the problem presented by the fact as it exists 
— the very reverse of that which would thus have 
been predicted — what other clue can any one offer 
to the mystery, that the French Colonies should 
have remained, not entirely quietly, indeed, but 
with only occasional returns of ineffectual throes 
and spasms, up to this very hour, in a political 
condition which every thing would seem to have 
conspired to render loathsome and abhorrent — while 
the English Colonies, snapping alike every link 
either of love or of power, breaking every bond 
both of affection and authority, resolved themselves 
into an Independent Nation half a century ago, — 
what other explanation, I repeat, can any one give 
to this paradox fulfilled, than that which springs 



49 

from a consideration of the comparative capacities for 
self-improvement and self-government of the Races 
bj which they were planted ? A common history, 
a common language, a common blood, were, indeed, 
links of no ordinary strength, between the Atlantic 
Colonies and the Mother Country. But that language 
was the language in which Milton had sung, Pym 
pleaded, and Locke reasoned — that blood was the 
blood which Hampden had poured out on the plain 
of Chalgrove, and in which Sidney and Russell 
had weltered on the block of Martyrdom — and that 
history had been the history of toiling, struggling, 
but still-advancing Liberty for a thousand years. 
Such links could only unite the free. They lost 
their tenacity in a moment, when attempted to 
be recast on the forge of despotism and em- 
ployed in the service of oppression — nay, the brittle 
fragments into which they were broken in such 
a process, were soon moulded and tempered and 
sharpened into the very blades of a triumphant 
resistance. What more effective instruments, what 
more powerful incitements, did our Fathers enjoy, 
in their revolutionary struggle, than the lessons 
afforded them in the language, the examples held 
up to them in the history, the principles, opinions 
and sensibilities flowing from the hearts and vibrating 
through the veins, which they inherited from the 
very Nation against which they were contending ! — 
Yes, let us not omit, even on this day, when we 
commemorate the foundation of a Colony which 
dates back its origin to British bigotry and British 

7 



50 

persecution, even in this connection, too, when we are 
speaking of that contest for Liberty which owed 
its commencement to British oppression and British 
despotism, to express our gratitude to God, that 
old England was, still, our Mother Country, and 
to acknowledge our obligations to our British 
Ancestors for the glorious capabilities which they 
bequeathed us. 

But, with the single exception that both emigrated 
from England, the Colonies of Jamestown and 
Plymouth had nothing in common, and to all out- 
ward appearances, the former enjoyed every ad- 
vantage. The two Companies, as it happened, 
though so long an interval elapsed between their 
reaching America, left their native land within 
about a year of each other ; but under what widely 
different circumstances did they embark ! The 
former set sail from the port of the Metropolis, 
in a squadron of three vessels, under an experienced 
Commander, under the patronage of a wealthy and 
powerful Corporation, and with an ample patent 
from the Crown. The latter betook themselves 
to their solitary bark, by stealth, under cover of 
the night, and from a bleak and desert heath in 
Lincolnshire, while a band of armed horsemen, 
rushing down upon them before the embarkation 
was completed, made prisoners of all who were 
rot already on board, and condemned husbands 
and wives, and parents and children, to a cruel and 
almost hopeless separation. 

Nor did their respective arrivals on the Ameri- 



51 

can shores, though divided by a period of thirteen 
years, present a less signal contrast. The Vir- 
ginia Colony entered the harbor of Jamestown 
about the middle of May, and never could that 
lovely Queen of Spring have seemed lovelier, 
than when she put on her flowery kirtle and her 
wreath of clusters, to welcome those admiring 
strangers to the enjoyment of her luxuriant vegeta- 
tion. There were no Mayflowers for the Pilgrims, 
save the name, written, as in mockery, on the 
stern of their treacherous ship. They entered the 
harbor of Plymouth on the shortest day in the year, 
in this last quarter of December, — and when could 
the rigid Winter-King have looked more repulsive, 
than when, shrouded with snow and crowned with 
ice, he admitted those shivering wanderers within 
the realms of his dreary domination ? 

But mark the sequel. From a soil teeming with 
every variety of production for food, for fragrance, 
for beauty, for profit, the Jamestown Colonists 
reaped only disappointment, discord, wretchedness. 
Having failed in the great object of their adventure 
— the discovery of gold — they soon grew weary of 
their condition, and within three years after their 
arrival are found on the point of abandoning the 
Country. Indeed, they are actually embarked, one 
and all, with this intent, and are already at the 
mouth of the River, when, falling in with new 
hands and fresh supplies which have been sent to 
their relief, they are induced to return once more 
to their deserted village. 



52 

But even up to the very year in which the 
Pilgrims landed, ten years after this renewal of 
their designs, they ' had hardly become settled in 
their minds,' had hardly abandoned the purpose of 
ultimately returning to England, and their condition 
may be illustrated by the fact, that in 1619 and 
again in 1621, cargoes of young women, (a com- 
modity of which there was scarcely a sample in 
the whole plantation — and would to God, that all 
the traffic in human flesh on the Virginian Coast 
even at this early period had been as innocent in 
itself and as beneficial in its results !) were sent 
out by the Corporation in London and sold to the 
planters for wives, at from one hundred and twenty 
to one hundred and fifty poimds of tobacco apiece! 

Nor was the political condition of the Jamestown 
Colony much in advance of its social state. The 
Charter, under which they came out, contained not 
a single element of popular liberty, and secured not 
a sinde riirht or franchise to those who lived under 
it. And, though a gleam of freedom seemed to 
dawn upon them in 1619, when they instituted a 
Colonial Assembly and introduced the Representative 
System for the first time into the New World, the 
precarious character of their popular institutions and 
the slender foundation of their popular liberties at a 
much later period, even as far down as 1671, may 
be understood from that extraordinary declaration of 
Sir William Berkeley, then Governor of Virginia, to 
the Lords Commissioners : — ' I thank God, there 
are no free schools nor printing — and 1 hope we 



53 

shall not have these hundred years ^ — for learning 
has brought disobedience, and heresy and sects into 
the world ; and printing has divulged them, and 
libels against the best government. God keep us 
from both.' 

But how was it with the Pilgrims ? From a soil 
of comparative barrenness, they gathered a rich 
harvest of contentment, harmony and happiness. 
Coming to it for no purpose of commerce or ad- 
venture, they found all that they sought — religious 
freedom — and that made the wilderness to them like 
Eden, and the desert as the garden of the Lord. — 
Of quitting it, from the very hour of their arrival, 
they seem never once to have entertained, or even 
conceived, a thought. The first foot that leapt 
gently but fearlessly on Plymouth Rock was a 
pledge that there would be no retreating — tradition 
tells us, that it was the foot of Mary Chilton. 
They have brought their wives and their little ones 
with them, and what other assurance could they 
give that they have come to their home? And 
accordingly they proceed at once to invest it with 
all the attributes of home, and to make it a free and 
a happy home. The Compact of their own adoption 
under which they landed, remained the sole guide of 
their government for nine years, and though it was 
then superseded by a Charter from the Corporation 
within whose limits they had fallen, it was a Charter 
of a liberal and comprehensive character, and under 
its provisions they continued to lay broad and deep 
the foundations of Civil Freedom. The trial by 



54 

jury was established by the Pilgrims within three 
years after their arrival, and constitutes the appro- 
priate opening to the first chapter of their legislation. 
The education of their children, as we have seen, 
was one of their main motives for leaving Holland, 
and there is abundant evidence that it was among 
the earliest subjects of their attention — while the 
planters of Massachusetts, who need not be dis- 
tinguished from the planters of Plymouth for any 
purposes of this comparison, founded the College at 
Cambridge in 1636 — set up a printing press at the 
same place in 1639, which 'divulged,' in its first 
workings at least, nothing more libellous or heretical 
than a Psalm-book and an Almanac — and as early as 
1647 had instituted, by an ever memorable Statute, 
that noble system of New England Free Schools, 
which constitutes at this moment the best security of 
Liberty, wherever Liberty exists, and its best hope, 
wherever it is still to be established. 

It would carry me far beyond the allowable limits 
of this Address, if, indeed, I have not already ex- 
ceeded them, to contrast in detail, the respective 
influences upon our Country and, through it, upon 
the world, of these two original Colonies. The 
elements for such a contrast I have already sug- 
gested, and I shall content myself with only adding 
further upon this point, the recent and very re- 
markable testimony of two most intelligent French 
travellers, whose writings upon the United States 
have justly received such distinguished notice on 
both sides the Atlantic. 



55 

* I have already observed,' says De Tocqueville, 
that ' the origin of the American settlements may be 
looked upon as the first and most efficacious cause, to 
which the present prosperity of the United States may 
be attributed. * * * When I reflect upon the con- 
sequences of this primary circumstance, methinks, 
I see the destiny of America embodied in the first 
Puritan who landed on these shores, just as the 
human race was represented by the first man.' 

' If we wished,' says Chevalier, ' to form a single 
type, representing the American character of the 
present moment as a single whole, it would be 
necessary to take at least three-fourths of the 
Yankee race and to mix it with hardly one-fourth 
of the Virginian.' 

But the Virginia type was not complete when it 
first appeared on the coast of Jamestown, and I 
must not omit, before bringing these remarks to a 
conclusion, to allude to one other element of any 
just comparison between the two Colonies. — The 
year 1620 was unquestionably the great Epoch of 
American Destinies. Within its latter half were 
included the two events which have exercised in- 
comparably the most controlling influence on the 
character and fortunes of our Country. At the very 
time the Mayflower, with its precious burden, was 
engaged in its perilous voyage to Plymouth, another 
ship, far otherwise laden, was approaching the harbor 
of Virginia. It was a Dutch man-of-war, and its 
cargo consisted in part of twenty slaves, which were 
subjected to sale on their arrival, and with which the 



5Q 

foundations of domestic slavery in North America 
were laid. 

1 see those two fate-freighted vessels, laboring 
under the divided destinies of the same Nation, and 
striving against the billows of the same sea, like the 
principles of good and evil advancing side by side on 
the same great ocean of human life. I hear from 
the one the sighs of wretchedness, the groans of 
despair, the curses and clankings of struggling cap- 
tivity, sounding and swelling on the same gale, 
which bears only from the other the pleasant voices 
of prayer and praise, the cheerful melody of content- 
ment and happiness, the glad, the glorious 'anthem 
of the free.' Oh, could some angel arm, like that 
which seems to guide and guard the Pilgrim bark, 
be now interposed to arrest, avert, dash down and 
overwhelm its accursed compeer! But it may not 
be. They have both reached in safety the place of 
their destination. Freedom and Slavery, in one and 
the same year, have landed on these American shores. 
And American Liberty, like the Victor of ancient 
Rome, is doomed, let us hope not for ever, to endure 
the presence of a fettered captive as a companion in 
her Car of Triumph ! 

Gentlemen of the New England Society in the 
City of New York — I must detain you no longer. 
In preparing to discharge the duty, which you have 
done me the unmerited honor to assign me in the 
celebration of this hallowed Anniversary, I was more 
than once tempted to quit the narrow track of re- 



57 

mark which I have now pursued, and indulge in 
specuhitions or discussions of a more immediate and 
general interest. But it seemed to me, that if there 
was any day in the year wliich belonged of right to the 
past and the dead, this was that day, and to the past 
and the dead 1 resolved to devote my exclusive atten- 
tion. But though I have fuUilled that resolution, as 
you will bear me witness, with undeviating fidelity, 
many of the topics which I had proposed to myself 
seem hardly to have been entered upon — some of 
them scarcely approached. The principles of the 
Pilo;rims, the virtues of the Pilgrims, the faults of 
the Pilgrims — alas I there are enough always ready 
to make the most of these — the personal characters 
of their brave and pious leaders, Bradford, Brewster, 
Carver, Winslow, Alden, Allerton, Standish, — the day 
shall not pass away without their names being once at 
least audibly and honorably pronounced — the gradual 
rise and progress of the Colony they planted, and of 
the old Commonwealth with which it was early in- 
corporated, the origin and growth of the other Colo- 
nies, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Hampshire 
and the rest, which were afterwards included within 
the limits of New England, and many of the sons of 
all of which are doubtless present here this day — the 
history of New England as a whole, its great deeds 
and great men, its schools and scholars, its heroes 
and battle-fields, its ingenuity and industry, its soil.; 
— hard and stony, indeed, but of inestimable richness 
in repelling from its culture the idle, the ignorant and 
the enslaved, and developing the energies of free, in- 



58 

telligent, independent labor — the influences of New 
England abroad as well as at home, its emigration, 
ever onward, with the axe in one hand and the Bible 
in the other, clearing out the wild growth of buckeye 
and hickory, and pkiiiting the trees of knowledge and 
of life, driving the buffalo from forest to lake, from 
lake to prairie, and from prairie to the sea, till the very 
memory of its existence would seem likely to be 
lost, but for the noble City, which its pursuers, 
pausing for an instant on their track, have called by 
its name, and founded on its favorite haunt — these 
and a hundred other themes of interesting and ap- 
propriate discussion, have, I am sensible, been quite 
omitted. But I have already exhausted your 
patience, or certainly my own strength, and I hasten 
to relieve them both. 

It has been suggested, Gentlemen, by one of the 
French Travellers, whose opinions I have just cited, 
that, though the Yankee has set his mark on the 
United States during the last half century, and 
though ' he still rules the Nation,' that yet, the 
physical labor of civilization is now nearly brought 
to an end, the physical basis of society entirely laid, 
and that other influences are soon about to predomi- 
nate in rearing up the social superstructure of our 
Nation. I hail the existence of this Association, 
and of others like it in all parts of the Union, bound 
together by the noble cords of ' friendship, charity 
and mutual assistance,' as a pledge that New Eng- 
land principles, whether in ascendancy or under de- 
pression in the Nation at large, will never stand in 



59 

need of warm hearts and bold tongues to cherish 
and vindicate them. But, at any rate, let us rejoice 
that they have so long pervaded the country and 
prevailed in her institutions. Let us rejoice that 
the basis of her society has been laid by Yankee 
arms. Let us rejoice that the corner-stone of our 
Republican edifice was hewn out from the old, origi- 
nal, primitive, Plymouth quarry. In what remains 
to be done, either in finishing or in ornamenting that 
edifice, softer and more pliable materials may, per- 
haps, be preferred — the New England granite may 
be thought too rough and unwieldy — the architects 
may condemn it — the builders may reject it — but 
still, still, it will remain the deep and enduring 
foundation, not to be removed without undermining 
the whole fabric. And should that fabric be destined 
to stand, even when bad government shall descend 
upon it like the rains, and corruption come round about 
it like the floods, and faction, discord, disunion, and 
anarchy blow and beat upon it like the winds, — as 
God grant it may stand forever ! — it will still owe 
its stability to no more effective earthly influence, 

than, THAT IT WAS FOUNDED OIS PiLGRIM RoCK. 



60 



NOTES 



Pages 15 and 16. — In tliis description, and in some other of the narrative portions of the 
Address, I have employed phrases and paragraphs gleaned here and there from tlie writings 
of Prince, Morton, and others, without deeming it necessary to disfigure the pages by too 
frequent a use of the inverted commas. I might cite abundant authority for such a 
liberty. 



P. 28. — For the opportunity of perusing this Dialogue, I am indebted to Rev. Alexander 
Young, by whom it was copied from the Plymoutli Church Records. I am happy to be able 
to add, that Mr. Young is engaged in preparing for the press, a volume to be entitled ' The 
Old Chronicles of the Plymouth Colony, collected partly from original records and unpub- 
lished manuscripts, and partly from scarce tracts, hitherto unknown in this Country,' in 
which this Dialogue will be contained, and which will be, in fact, a history of the Plymouth 
People, written by themselves, from 1C02 to 16'24. Mr. Young confidently expects to be able 
to recover or restore the most valuable portion of Gov. Bradford's History, which was used 
by Prince and Hutchinson, but which disappeared during the War of the Revolution, and 
has been supposed to be irrecoverably lost. 



P. 38. — Von MUlIer, in his Universal History, speaks of ' the monument apparently Punic, 
which was found some years ago in the forests behind Boston,' and adds, ' it is possible that 
some Tyrians or Carthaginians, thrown by storms upon unknown coasts, uncertain if ever 
the same tracts might be again discovered, chose to leave this monument of their adventures.' 
He refers, without doubt, to the same Rock at Dighton, which the Society of Northern Anti- 
quaries in Denmark claim as conclusive evidence of the discovery of America by the Scan- 
dinavians. 



P. 53. — The distinction of being the first person that set foot on Plymouth Rock has been 
claimed for others beside Mary Chilton, and particularly for John .^Iden. But I could not 
resist the remark of Judge Davis on this point, in one of his notes to Morton's Memorial. 
After quoting the language of another, that ' for the purposes of the arts a female figure, 
typical of faith, hope, and charity, is well adapted,' — he observes, that ' as there is a great 
degree of uncertainty on this subject, it is not only grateful, but allowable, to indulge the 
imagination, and we may expect from the friends of John Alden, that they should give place 
to the lady.' 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

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